The Prototype of the Saved Man

This page summarizes the topic sentences of the talk's major paragraphs, organized by theme, followed by key doctrinal quotations and scripture citations. Bracketed commentary and asides from the original talk have been condensed and paraphrased throughout; quoted passages are kept short and attributed.

Who Christ is

• Christ is described as affable but not gregarious, approachable and not aloof, patient, humble despite undeniable power — simultaneously "a Lamb and a Lion," gentle toward the penitent and terrible toward the unrepentant at His coming.
• On the road to Emmaus, Christ's willingness to walk beside grieving disciples without revealing Himself, and to ask what they were discussing as if He did not already know, is offered as a model of His characteristic gentleness and lack of self-importance.
• Denver recounts his own first answered prayer in a military barracks as the pattern of how faith begins: a small, easily doubted impression that requires action — baptism, in his case — to become anything more.
• D&C 1:18-19 is cited to describe how the Lord's servants are deliberately called "weak," "that the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple" — Christ's own humility in His mortal ministry is mirrored in His pattern of choosing unimpressive messengers.

Foreordination and the holy order after the Son of God

• Alma 13 is read as describing a class of priests "prepared from the foundation of the world," foreordained on the basis of faith and good works exercised in an earlier, prior estate — a "preparatory redemption" for those who did not harden their hearts.
• This calling is available again now: the present life is described as another cycle of the same test, in which anyone can currently choose good, exercise faith, and qualify by works for standing in the next cycle of creation.
• Authority conferred only within this life, without ordination "before the foundation of the world," is described as inadequate to handle eternal things, since "anything subject to time will be destroyed by time."
• D&C 130:18-22 is cited on the acquisition of "intelligence" in this life rising with a person in the resurrection, and on the Father's body of flesh and bones "as tangible as man's," grounding foreordination and embodiment together as part of one coherent, literal cosmology rather than metaphor.

The infinite atonement and becoming like Him

• Christ's death is called an infinite and eternal sacrifice because an infinite being's life was unjustly taken; this infinite price allows Him to make intercession for all mankind and reverse Adam's fall for the entire creation.
• Salvation requires becoming "exactly and precisely" like Christ, not merely admitted to His presence; this is a matter of progression "from grace to grace," not an instantaneous transformation.
• Christ was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15), but crucially "suffered temptations but gave no heed unto them" (D&C 20:22) — the distinction between being tempted and yielding is treated as the entire difference between Him and fallen mankind.
• The talk closes by insisting Christ's coming judgment will be cosmic and terrible for the unprepared, while remaining, for now, patient, quick to forgive, and equally accessible to every person regardless of standing.